California congressman introduces bill to defund the state's high-speed rail project

Andrew Sheeler, The Sacramento Bee on Dec 11, 2024

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As he vowed to do on X, U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., on Wednesday announced he is introducing legislation to eliminate federal funding for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which seeks to build a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

The line would start with the much more modest route of Merced to Bakersfield.

The project has already spent around $6.8 billion in federal dollars and is seeking an additional $8 billion from the U.S. government. Kiley’s bill would make the California high-speed rail project ineligible for any further federal funding.

Kiley is working in tandem with billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom were tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to co-chair a Department of Government Efficiency.

The DOGE, as they are calling it, isn’t really a department, and any recommendations they make would have to be approved by both Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress, but it does have a goal to eliminate vast swaths of federal spending and bureaucracy.

In a statement Wednesday, Kiley called the California high-speed rail project a failure due to “political ineptitude,” and added that “there is no plausible scenario where the cost to federal or state taxpayers can be justified.”

“Our share of federal transportation funding should go towards real infrastructure needs, such as improving roads that rank among the worst in the country,” he said.

Kiley sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which is controlled by Republicans who long have been critical of the project. Should Kiley’s bill pass the House, it would also need to be approved by the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-seat majority, and be signed by Trump.

That’s likely to be difficult, though, because it would probably take 60 votes to limit debate and both of California’s U.S. senators are Democrats.

The Sacramento Bee has reached out to the California High-Speed Rail Authority for comment.

In a previous statement to The Bee, authority spokesperson Toni Tinoco said that the agency “continues to make significant progress.”

Tinoco pointed out that the project has been environmentally cleared for all but 31 miles between L.A. and San Francisco, making the project “shovel-ready for future phases of investment.”

Tinoco also pushed back against statements by Kiley and the DOGE about how the project has been beset by both delays (it was initially estimated to be complete by 2020) and massive cost overruns (ballooning from an initial cost estimate of $45 billion to as much as $127.9 billion).

“It did not account for inflation or any unknown scope, a lesson learned as our estimates now account for inflation and project scope, helping explain cost difference,” Tinoco wrote.

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